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Money
After The Fall, global currency collapsed and underwent a complete reorganization as society rebuilt itself. Below are descriptions of the most commonly encountered forms of currency. =Old Money= NuYen After the Fall, the Amaterasu Consortium of Japan was the first to begin distributing a new, universally-accepted currency, called the New Yen, or more commonly, NuYen. Paper NuYen has been supplanted at this point by the universal digital Credit, but in most areas "NuYen" is synonymous with "money". EuroBucks Around the same time the European Union collapsed, and along with it the Euro, and individual countries and fiefdoms began issuing their own currency. While some were quite stable, most were generally subject to wild fluctuation in value and all were generally deemed risky, deservedly so or not. In the ex-United States, European currencies were somewhat derogatorily referred to as 'EuroBucks'. =Modern Currency= Bright Zone Money Credits After the Fall, barter and local scrip were the most common forms of currency, up until international computer networks were restored. With the rise of the global Consortiums, digital currency became standard, and is colloquially known as 'credits'. Access to money for Bright citizens is through credsticks, very similar to the old pre-Fall USB flash drives. They come in a variety of shapes, including bracelets, and are often used as fashion accessories. They are registered to a Bright citizen's unique SSN, and often have a thumb-lock keyed to the person. You can set an amount, touch your credstick to someone else's and transfer money that way. Virtually all public vendors in Bright areas have credstick interfaces. Cyberdecks can function as credsticks for Matrix transactions by keying your 'deck to your bank account, or slotting a credstick directly into the deck. Bright citizens use only their SSN-linked personal credsticks for legitimate purposes. Businesses in Bright areas don't accept anything else (except under the table, but that's another matter...), and are often careful in their identity-checking, especially if the customer fits certain profiles. Generally speaking, money only appears in digital form. Bright citizens almost universally have their money deposited directly to their bank accounts, which is then instantly accessible electronically via a personal credstick keyed to your account. You can buy limited-value credsticks as well, though the SSN of the buyer is permanently associated to it. The higher the value or potential value on a credstick, the more rigorous its identity-checking tends to be, ranging from a quick SSN verification to retinal or biometric scans. Grey/Dark Zone Money Unmarked Credsticks In Grey and Dark areas, though, things can be a little different. While credstick readers are still common, many of them see ident-tagged credsticks only once in a blue moon; the rest process unmarked or even fake credsticks the majority of the time. This is most common in the Grey areas, where a lot of folks have SSNs, sure, but they may not always want to advertise where their NuYen is coming from. NuYen also changes hands in the form of entire value-specified credsticks themselves, when readers aren't available. Scrip and Barter No government prints "hard cash" anymore. Cash, after all, doesn't identify itself and you with every swipe, every purchase, tagged, chipped, and IDed. In the deep Dark, barter's a lively business - for goods, services, hacked credsticks, and just about everything else. There's also scrip. Scrip is Dark money, generally paper (akin to 20th century paper currency), issued by a local broker or reputable dealer. There are many, many types of scrip, and not everyone will accept every kind of scrip. There is Lynwood scrip, and specific Granger scrip, there is Tijuana scrip, Anaheim scrip. It is often indexed to a fixed value (in NuYen, gold, or some other stable valuable) and may be exchanged for the value written on the paper at the merchant/broker who issued it or one of their associates, minus a fee. Think medieval banking. Granger scrip is likely to be accepted throughout Lynwood, and Tijuana scrip may be accepted in most of Tijuana, but the further you get from the place it was issued, the least likely it is to be recognized as anything but funny-looking paper. This is why Darks often prefer barter, or solid gold for international transactions. Forgeries are common, and the value of scrip fluctuates wildly, depending on the commodity its value is backed with and the reputation of the organization that issued it. The overwhelming majority of Bright stores do not take scrip. A few bars, cheap grocery stores, and pawn shops in areas frequented by Darks may take certain types of scrip. Category:Canon Category:Setting